September 17, 2009

A Jedi-Infused "Yes We Can"

With the Administration growing more savvy in challenging the Becks, Birthers and Teabaggers, is it possible (following Obama’s Congress speech and energetic stops in Minnesota and Pennsylvania) that we’re witnessing a momentum shift?

I sense yesterday’s photo op was actually a lot less frivolous than it seems at first. The saber play is a perfect analogy. In a single stroke, it not only casts the agile (and “child safe”) Obama, the defender of the temple (well, okay, the White House), as “the force” of responsibility, but by inference, it frames that whole lot of wingnuts and haters as “from the dark side.”

Demonstrating the will to engage — while softening the mode with playfulness and humor — this might be the most “unburdened” Obama since “Bo.”

(image: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images. caption: US President Barack Obama (C) pretends to fence with a lightsaber as First Lady Michelle Obama (L) watches during an event on Olympics, Paralympics and youth sport on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, September 16, 2009)